How Lily Learned To Take Life Less Seriously
by Froody
Summary: Lily took a deep breath, ducked her head and kicked James gently in the shins. "I like you. Idiot." - In which a room requires Lily to rethink her views of James Potter.  L/J


Suppressing a grin with obvious effort, Potter took a step backwards – a feat made rather difficult by their cluttered surrounds – and raised his hands.

"Easy there, Evans. I think you're taking this whole thing too seriously."

Lily inhaled through her nose, parchment crumpling in her fist. "Taking things too seriously, Potter? That's what you think, is it?"

Potter nodded. "Yeah, that's a fair summation of it."

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he surveyed the room for what must have been the fortieth time since they'd made the mistake of walking through that bloody door. His straight face dissolved with a snort, and he turned back to Lily. "Needed the loo, did you, Evans?"

"Oh, shut it," Lily said with a scowl, hopelessly embarrassed and entirely unable to hide the fact. "You were the one who wanted to explore the magically appearing bathroom."

"It wasn't on the map," said Potter, as if this explained everything. "And anyway, you're the one who got us locked in here. Why'd you go and close the door? You weren't going to go while I was in here, were you?"

Lily groaned, shifting from foot to foot and trying not to be obvious about the fact that her bladder felt ready to explode. "I don't know. I did it without thinking. Petunia always has a go at me for leaving doors open at home."

With an exaggerated sigh, Potter plunked himself down upon the closed lid of a nearby toilet. "Well, now that we've established whose fault it is," he sniffed, and then broke into yet another grin. "What a way to spend an evening, eh? Trapped in a room full of chamber pots with the lovely Lily Evans. Could be worse."

"You're telling me," said Lily. "Try being stuck in a room with you."

This wasn't entirely fair, but then again, Lily wasn't in the best of moods. Chamber pots flocked out in every direction, and Lily was utterly unable to use a single one. Irony was cruel indeed.

"I'm wounded, Evans. People would kill to be in your shoes right now. Imagine it: a private rendezvous with the Head Boy himself. Personally, I'm green with envy."

Forcibly curbing a suggestion that Potter go 'rendezvous' with himself, Lily pushed over a porcelain chamber pot with her foot and took a seat. "Oh, believe me, I feel privileged," she muttered.

"At least it doesn't smell," offered Potter, eyebrows raised, and Lily couldn't stop a reluctant grin from spreading across her face.

She hated to admit it, but things really could have been worse. Against all odds, Potter seemed to have matured from the arrogant, bullying toerag of years past. There had been no inappropriate innuendo all term, no unwanted sexual advances, hardly any moonlit serenades from the Astronomy Tower, and best of all, no stringing up of Slytherins by the toes in public places.

Although Dumbledore was clearly off his trolley, Lily had to admit that Potter's appointment to the position of Head Boy had done some good. He had been defying her expectations all year; not once had Lily been forced to use Unforgivables on the Head Boy.

"If you're, er," Potter began, and then stopped rather awkwardly, rubbing a hand against the back of his head and generally painting a portrait of discomfort.

Lily, thoughts neatly interrupted, raised her head from her arms and stared.

Potter gazed back, going bright red in the face and looking like he rather wished he hadn't started speaking.

"If I'm what?"

"If you really need to go, well. Don't let me, erm. I'll turn away, shall I?"

She hadn't been forced to use Unforgivables _yet_.

"I can't use the loo while you're just sitting there," said Lily, going as crimson as Potter. "That's just – I mean, I know we've been getting along better lately, but we're not_ that _close."

"Haven't yet reached that state of familiarity." Potter nodded to the floor, evidently unable to meet Lily's eyes. "Sorry," he said a moment later. "I shouldn't have suggested it."

"I wish you hadn't," said Lily, and felt a twinge of guilt as Potter turned redder still – not that she'd let it stop her from teasing him.

"It's not the worst pick-up line you've tried on me," she said, feeling rather fond of Potter as he squirmed about, "but I'd say it's in the top five."

Potter, who had resorted to ruffling his hair in agitation, seemed to take offence at this. "Please, Evans; not even I would try to chat up a girl in a bathroom."

Lily snorted, and Potter, bowing his head, conceded the point: "Alright, alright, there was that one time – but Moaning Myrtle doesn't count, not really."

"She still fancies you, you know," said Lily, prodding at a stray bedpan with her foot. "We don't go into her bathroom if we can help it; it's too sickening. But I suppose even you might seem charming to a girl who lives in a toilet."

"That's what Moony said," Potter noted with a scowl, but he brightened soon enough, turning to Lily with a smirk. "Maybe you'll find me charming when we're still stuck here in five years."

Lily rolled her eyes. "Tell you what, Potter: consider yourself officially charming as soon as you get me out of this room."

"Is that right?" asked Potter, climbing to his feet with the spark of a challenge in his eyes. "Go on, Evans. Say you'll go out with me if I spring you from this terrible, torturous place." He pulled out his wand and paused, holding it ready.

Lily, after a quick altercation with her bladder, nodded resignedly. Couldn't hurt, could it?

Potter beamed, shoved his glasses up his nose, and whipped his wand towards the door: "_Alohamora_!"

Nothing happened. Lily was unsurprised, to say the least. Not only had she tried the unlocking spell the moment they'd realised they were locked in, but Potter had watched her do it, the stupid prat. She was starting to suspect that they really would be trapped in here forever.

"I'll just get back to the list, then," she called to Potter, who had taken to grappling with the door handle in a very Muggle-like fashion. Shaking her head, Lily began to smooth out the lengthy roll of parchment that she'd been holding all this time.

The whole sodding affair had started at dinner, when Dumbledore had landed Lily with an armful of parchment and a meeting with the Head Boy to sort it all out. It was Filch's latest list of forbidden student activities – a formidable document by any standard – and they were to go through the thing and highlight any offence that seemed 'unusually unreasonable'.

"Blimey," Potter had breathed at the sight of the sprawling parchment. "No way he could've thought up half this stuff by himself. Filch must've been taking notes from the Marauders for years."

This statement rang true, and made it rather easier for Lily to hold Potter personally responsible for the length of the bloody list. As Potter had beamed down at the tiny handwriting, clearly reliving pranks of the past, Lily had stewed in her seat, thinking of homework and N.E.W.T.S. and everything she could be doing if it wasn't for Filch's private war with Potter's gang.

Now, sitting primly atop an overturned chamber pot with her legs crossed and an increasing sense of desperation, Lily positively yearned for the sight of Filch's scowling face.

"What'd Filch ever do to you, anyway?" she burst out, all indignation for the poor, long-suffering caretaker.

Potter turned around, removing a sneaker from the doorknob and steadying himself against the stubborn door. "What's that?"

"Why go and cause so much trouble for Filch and the house-elves, Potter? Why drive him to the making of this list, which, incidentally, calls for the prohibition of spoons and 'all spherical foodstuffs'?"

Potter had the nerve to laugh. "Oh come on, Evans, don't pretend you didn't enjoy our first annual inter-house catapult war." He gave the door one last kick before summoning his wand from the floor.

Lily rolled her eyes. It figured that Potter could pull off wandless magic while remaining utterly incapable of opening a single bloody door.

"Thing is, Evans," Potter began, perching himself on a nearby toilet seat, "our pranks are essentially harmless. A bit of fun." He waved his hand as Lily made to argue. "Mightn't have always been like that, but the program's changed since Fifth Year. Me and Sirius, we don't want to spend our last year at school crying over N.E.W.T.s – don't try to tell me you do. Especially with, you know. All the stuff going on outside. I reckon some fun's in order with all that waiting for us after school."

Lily dropped the parchment to her lap and gazed skywards, trying to sort herself out. When Potter started sounding rational, something had clearly gone wrong in her head.

"What are you looking at?" asked Potter, evidently having finished his rambling little speech. He stood up and leant over Lily, craning his neck in the general direction that she had been looking in.

"Oh, nothing," said Lily, eyes dropping back to Potter, who looked quite ridiculous as he squinted blindly upwards. "But I suppose there is something in what you said."

Potter gave up, slumping back onto his toilet seat.

"Don't take everything so seriously," he said, throwing an oddly sad smile Lily's way. "There's fun to be had, and maybe not so much time left to enjoy it."

Gazing blankly at Filch's list, Lily tried to understand the lump that had settled in her throat at Potter's words. He was right. They had so little time left at Hogwarts, so little time to pelt other students with peas and explore rooms that appeared opposite a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls to pirouette. They'd had seven years at Hogwarts, seven years cocooned away from harsh reality, and now there were only months left.

"What if I–"

Lily looked up and over to Potter. He was glaring at his feet, having cut himself off mid-sentence. Lily had the distinct impression that he had been watching her closely during the last few minutes.

"What if you what?" she asked quietly.

Potter raised his head with apparent effort and fixed his eyes to hers. Lily forced herself to keep his gaze as he continued in a low voice: "What if I don't see you again? After school."

Lily blinked. Never see Potter again? The thought hadn't crossed her mind. Life without Potter meant life without countless everyday annoyances, freedom from pranks and pokes and propositions. Never again would those crooked spectacles tilt her way and distract her from her studies. She'd never have anyone quite as ready to be punished as Potter, nobody quite as willing to work for her attention.

A dull, inexplicable ache settled into Lily's stomach instead of the elation she might have imagined. Hoping to settle herself, she twisted her hands in her lap.

"Would you ever think of me?" Potter asked, staring back at the floor. His fingers latched around the edge of the toilet seat as Lily's silence created a pregnant pause. Finally, he sighed, reaching up to adjust his glasses. "That's the only thing in the world that keeps me up at night."

"Not Voldemort?" said Lily, her voice set a pitch higher than normal.

Potter snorted. "Please. I'm more frightened of Myrtle."

Lily laughed, and some of the tension that had bottled up inside their little water closet drained away. "Now there's a girl who won't forget you."

With a grin, Potter turned to her and raised his eyebrows, and Lily realised that her own personal toerag could laugh at himself, really laugh at himself, and suddenly this seemed more important than her bladder and graduation and Dark Lords.

"You're really not so bad, are you?"

Potter's grin faded slightly. "I'm only as bad as you think I am."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," said Lily with a spontaneous smirk, but her face softened as she looked, really _looked_, at Potter's downcast eyes. "Hey," she murmured, settling a hand rather gingerly on Potter's back.

He twitched at the sudden application of pressure. Then, rather than jerk away as Lily had half expected, he seemed to freeze up like he'd been hit by a stunning spell.

Put at ease by Potter's tension, and feeling slightly cheeky besides, Lily moved her hand to Potter's left shoulder and gave it a bit of a comforting squeeze. "James," she said with a smile, feeling validated when his head spun round to face her. "James," she repeated, sounding out the strange vowel warmth in the word. It wasn't a name to be spat out, like 'Potter', all blunt, rude consonants. 'James' felt somehow – oddly – intimate.

Lily shook her head clear and continued: "You do remember how we came to be on the Seventh Floor originally, don't you?"

Potter – or rather, James – cleared his throat and tilted his head back, obviously making an effort to think. "We were – oh, that's it – we were taking a short-cut to the Tower so I could hide – er – _confiscate _certain items in Sirius's possession before Filch could enforce some unusually unreasonable prohibitions."

Snorting, Lily flicked James on the arm. "You were sprinting down corridors in your 'altruistic' little quest to save your own skin. I was helping up all the First Years you knocked aside on the way. And you were having fun, weren't you?"

"As always," answered James, a small smile curling across his face.

"Right. So don't decide to take yourself too seriously now, for God's sake," Lily said, and took a moment to let that sink into James's abnormally thick skull (and to remind herself to stop touching him in a would-be casual manner). She tucked her hair behind her ears and crossed her legs the other way, hoping madly that she'd soon be able to access a proper, private toilet. She started when a hesitant finger poked her in the side.

James was grinning at the floor. "You like me," he stated simply.

"Do not," Lily spluttered, but there was something missing from her voice, something uncomfortably like conviction. She turned her head away as her cheeks began to burn. Lily had never had to work so hard to convince herself to put Potter in his proper place.

"Do so," said James, catching Lily's chin with his fingers and pulling her face back towards him. His voice was quietly confident. "You have to like me. If you didn't, then why would you care?"

Lily glared downwards, treacherous heart pounding in her chest. She was mortified by the thought that James might be able to feel her racing pulse with his fingertips.

"Hands off, Head Boy," Lily ordered, resolutely ignoring the question. If she didn't have an answer for herself, she most certainly did not have an answer for James. "You may have unexplored emotional depths, James Potter, but you have utterly failed to spring me from this room. So keep off until then."

James nodded hesitantly, obviously bound by this appeal to his Gryffindor sense of honour. He looked so – woeful, and Lily, who had pulled haughtily away, felt her resolve break into pieces. She had always seen James Potter as the archetypal immature toerag, but that description no longer fit the boy who was sitting next to her, so vulnerable and confused and earnest. This was James, not Potter, _James_, and he was trying so hard, and she might never see him again, not after this year –

"Oh, all right, then," Lily said as she gave up entirely and strung her arms around James's neck. A sense of _rightness_ flooded through her as she leant in against his chest, and for a minute, all she could do was stare back into brown eyes, wide and wondering as her own must be. Then, just as James worked up the courage to slide his arms around Lily's waist, the door burst open with a bang to reveal none other than Albus Dumbledore.

James released Lily like she was on fire.

With a twinkle in his eyes, Dumbledore leaned into the room and took a look around, nodding approvingly at the chamber pots. He did not say a word to mark his surprise at the presence of his Head Boy and Girl.

"Curious," he muttered to himself, "yet quite convenient, quite convenient indeed. Just as I had required."

Lily and James looked at each other, and then simultaneously began edging towards the doorway. In his haste, James almost tripped over a fancy copper pot, but Lily caught at his arm and led him to safe passage.

"We won't keep you, Professor," said Lily politely as they drew level with Dumbledore.

The Headmaster inclined his nightcap towards them as they passed through the door.

"We were just working on the list," James burst out, evidently suffering from a potent mixture of guilt and embarrassment. "Working very hard. On the list."

If it hadn't been for Dumbledore's presence, Lily just might have been forced to use those Unforgivables.

"Goodnight, Professor," she said sweetly, ushering James through the door before giving a final nod to Dumbledore. The door closed with a click, and Lily sank back against it with a groan.

"So what do you reckon?" James asked a few moments later as he broke out of his state of shock. He reached out for Lily's hand, and she let him pull her towards him. James's fingers closed warm around hers, and she looked up to find his eyes gleaming behind those permanently crooked spectacles. "Do you think that was Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets?"

"Bit disappointing if it was," said Lily, thinking back to those few passages of _Hogwarts: A History _that she'd been able to bring herself to read. "I thought it'd be a bit more evil, you know. More snakes. Less of the toilet fixation."

James shrugged, leaning back against the portrait of Barnabus the Barmy and knocking a troll off-balance in the middle of a plié. "Always thought he'd be completely barmy. Maybe he had a weak bladder. That'd be something to add to the historical records."

At this mention of bladders, Lily's attention was brought squarely back to her own particular problem, and she released James's hand with a start.

"Oi, where are you going?" called James, tailing Lily as she marched down the corridor.

"Need to talk to Myrtle," said Lily, not bothering to turn around. Having reached the head of the staircase, she grabbed for the banister and took the steps two at a time.

James hurtled after her, knocking a couple of Third Years aside on the way. "Students out of bed after hours," he called after them, but merely winked when they wheeled about in horror. It was with much noise and general clatter that he eventually pulled up alongside Lily, a smirk plastered wide across his face.

"Going to fight over me, are you?"

Lily sighed and considered tripping James down the stairs with a flick of her wand. "Item 102: No tripping of students on the staircases," she muttered, glancing briefly at the list she still held in her hand. Now that she was out of that chamber pot prison, Lily's desire to see Filch's face was greatly reduced.

"What's that?" asked James, peering over her shoulder and nearly tripping himself up in the process.

"Never mind," said Lily, beaming as she caught sight of the second floor landing. Luckily the staircase hadn't moved about too much, or they'd have ended up on the wrong side of the castle.

James was off the staircase and holding a hand out to Lily before she could think to reject his belated chivalry. She smiled at him as she made to pass, but James refused to let go of her hand.

"Admit you like me. Go on."

"Fine, I like you, now let me–"

"You have to mean it."

Lily looked back to James, and saw that he was serious, the berk. This was it, then. Time to spit it out, live in the moment. Time to stop taking herself so seriously.

Lily took a deep breath, ducked her head, and then kicked James gently in the shins. "I like you. Idiot."

"Alright," said James, looking as if all his dreams had come true, "so just one more question, then I'll let you go."

"Come on, then."

"Why didn't you just use one of the bathrooms on the seventh floor?"

Lily thwacked him over the head with her sheaf of parchment. James merely laughed, pulling Lily towards him by the waist and overcoming her mock resistance with ease.

"Item 62," she growled, fastening her fingers into his shirt and giving him a bit of a shove. "'Students will not demonstrate their romantic attachments on school property.'"

"Unusually unreasonable, wouldn't you say?" James murmured into her neck, and Lily shrugged. It seemed she'd lost the ability to take Filch seriously somewhere along the way.


End file.
